Cables beneath MetroCentre a mystery

Monday

Nov 26, 2007 at 12:01 AMNov 26, 2007 at 12:24 AM

In a massive tome of survey maps in his office, the underground wires are clearly marked. Running along an easement owned by the phone company, the wires make a north-south cut across the building’s footprint and pass almost directly under center ice of the hockey rink.

Sean F. Driscoll

Corey Pearson knows one simple truth about the MetroCentre:

Don’t mess with the wires buried beneath the building.

In a massive tome of survey maps in his office, they are clearly marked. Running along an easement owned by the phone company, the wires make a north-south cut across the building’s footprint and pass almost directly under center ice of the hockey rink.

Some lines are identified on the plans as telephone and electricity conduits. Others are marked more mysteriously — a thin line broken by an occasional question mark.
“It goes right underneath us,” Pearson said, peering at the drawings.

Those mystery lines have become part of the MetroCentre’s lore. To some, they rival Stonehenge or crop circles in terms of intrigue. To others, they are just a part of municipal minutia, a fact of life in a city crisscrossed by utility lines left from generations past.

“It’s definitely not a folk legend,” said Jon Hollander, an engineer with the city. “I know when the MetroCentre was constructed, it certainly was built over some communications stuff that was in previous existence. Typically, the duct banks were shared, rented, leased by whoever. Who knows what toll cables may have been in existence? The MetroCentre was built over existing lines — what the status is of those today, I don’t know.”

Hollander said the lines, which would be placed in a series of three- or four-inch diameter duct piping, could be abandoned evidence of once-cutting-edge technology.

“At one time, there was a full set of Western Union cables that went around the city, so there would be duct work (to hold wires) by Western Union that would physically still be in place,” he said.

Whatever is contained in those cable trunks, it’s long kept the MetroCentre from digging too deep into its foundations.

When the first ice floor was installed in 1998, representatives from SBC, as AT&T was then known, were on hand to make sure no lines were cut, Pearson said.

When the staff started discussing the renovations now under way, an early plan involved lowering the hockey rink to increase the center’s overall capacity.

The words, Pearson remembers, were barely out of his mouth before they were nixed.
“Everyone said, ‘No, you can’t do that because of the cables,’” Pearson said.

The lines will likely always keep the MetroCentre’s floor at its current elevation. Hollander said rerouting the lines, which likely run for blocks, if not miles, in either direction from the building, would be a major engineering headache.

Pearson knows that could prevent future expansions, but the conspiracy theorist in him doesn’t mind. Finding out what’s down there would be akin to draining Loch Ness and finding just a bunch of little fish.

“They do not want you (messing) around over that area,” he said.

Staff writer Sean F. Driscoll can be reached at 815-987-1410 or sdriscoll@rrstar.com.

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